


the shadows will follow you home

by whateverliesunsaid



Series: a study in pond [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Prose meets poetry, loads of metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 11:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10876008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whateverliesunsaid/pseuds/whateverliesunsaid
Summary: Stare danger down and let the wild inside of you shake them in their boots.





	the shadows will follow you home

**Author's Note:**

> an study on amy pond’s story inspired by daphne gottlieb’s poem fifteen ways to stay alive.

01\. Forget the shadow behind you when you turn around the corner. Forget the darkness and how it lingers, forget the way it creeps around your feet and threatens to climb up your legs when you feel your worst. Stay on your feet or they might jump straight to the heart. This shadow will kill you. It knows where you live and it wants to follow you there.

02\. Put on your lipstick, bold and clear, so they can read your lips from across the street. Don't kiss the bomb without it. The sad reality is that the universe obliterates history by the second, if you don't leave a mark you might as well have never been there. Guts and lipstick everywhere might be the nightmare of janitors everywhere but at least you'll be remembered. And they will know, from across the street, that you weren't afraid. That you smiled and kissed your demise; that like Pandora you had curiosity in your fate and it would trump all else. Even if it killed you. It took you this far so an ending is a fair tribute to the mad ride.

03\. Run until your lungs burn, until your legs ache, until you know nothing else but the exhaustion of your limbs and the marks that creep up your arms to your chest, to your face. Run until you die but die knowing you picked your poison. You don't know it yet but you'll die a thousand times — so make it worthwhile. Don't look away. Don't forget. Pretend you don't speak anymore, let the wind steal your words and let the oxygen beckon your lungs' attention. Stare danger down and let the wild inside of you shake them in their boots.

04\. When all else fails, pretend you've never seen him before. That his spring is not common to your ears, that the echo of his voice isn't a call from home itself. Pretend you don't know him when they arrest him and call him a wizard. When they build a pyre in the middle of the square and the girls come out to appease the raging gods with their song and dance. Laugh in the face of their interrogation, with your teeth bleeding and your face red of a white rage you can't ignore. It sits in the pit of your stomach and the scream holds on to dear life on the walls of your throat. Can't they tell you came to save them? Pretend you don't know anything. Pretend you're not angry. When all else fails, don't recognize the blonde curls across the street or the brunette who shows up at the right moment and saves the day. Pretend the universe is always kind. Pretend you all aren't protected by a very specific type of self cruelty and mutual love. Pretend this pact won't be the end of you all someday. Pretend you don't trust.

05\. Offer them your safety and tell them nothing about the many ways it killed you. Open the doors and let them in, but don't tell them about how many times you stepped out into the void and almost fell into oblivion or the many times you almost fell into a sun. Tell about the other times where the monsters walked in and tucked themselves into your bed, waiting. The wonder and the greatness has a price. Tell them it is going to be something. But never tell them how high can this price be. Or how sometimes it is too high, even. How there were things you wouldn't have given up for anything but now is gone and lost and not yours to take back. Tell them about the benefits and forget to warn them about how the price hurts when it's a fresh wound, a newborn lack, a stilted silence. How sometimes you'd give everything back to go back to the start.

06\. When you make the promise to jump together, jump at the one. Don't waste a second looking around to be sure, just do it. Fall into whatever may wait on the other side with the trust they will be there to hold your hand, to run with you. Trust they will break physics to keep you safe. That you matter more than anything else. To them, you do. Crash down like a meteor, burning and sure. Killing the all the dinosaurs.

07\. Do not press the big red button.

08\. Unless you're really, really sure.

09\. Only give what you can take back. The universe keeps crying debts of things you don't recall asking for in the first place. Don't worry about the misplaced decay or disaster. This melancholy is yours to survive so do it. Give your arms to the wolves, never your chest. Don't let them take your heart. There's many days you will lose to the continuum flux of events so pray to all gods that may listen that you will forget this one, too. Don't trust them when they tell you your wish will be made true. Don't trust anyone until you forget why you should trust them in the first place. Then, go back to the start.

10\. Practice your lies. A well told lie gets you through the universe back to your doorstep, a sloppy truth will get you killed in a second. A story is a story and this universe eats them up so make yours good or you'll become someone's lunch.

11\. Don't kiss the grenade before you throw it. Don't throw it either. You kiss it and it tells the universe, it makes the smoke pink and orange and blue and tells the story of your life. Don't throw it because if you did then it would remind you of all the reasons that is not a choice you'd make. So why do it now? Time is not a linear event. Make good choices — don't care about the ones you saw yourself do next. Let Her take care of it. Mistress Time already has plenty of scars in her spine, this one won't stand out any more than the golden ones that splits her in half.

12\. Pretend you're not going crazy from a darkness you never knew was stuck under your shoe and followed you home. Pretend it isn't spreading through the walls and that you're living in a pitch black cubicle of your own regrets. Call a painter every 3 months for a top up. This time, paint it purple for a change. Don't let the blue man know you left your golden shades in an open market in Venice.

13\. Pretend you didn't make your choice and made peace with it now. Pretend to everyone including yourself that you know how it ends, that you've seen it in the corner of your eye in a street in New York. Pretend you didn't know when you stood in the graveyard that you knew you'd be buried there. You had the words to this story on your lips as it began so let's not pretend you didn't write it in the end. Pretend you didn't know how it would end when you began. The angels were always inside anyway so what is the help in closing your eyes now, darling? You're already stone underneath this fair skin.

14\. When you fly back into a series of events you remember but can't distinguish, pretend you're not scared for a second. Let the wind drag your hair past your face, a wall of scarlet between you and all of those faces you can't recognise and smile. Let the wind drag your tears off from your eyes, close them so you don't hang on to the future too much. It doesn't matter now. Who you loved or who you forgot to say goodbye to. It's all said and done and the book's last page is up. You are not his end but why does it feel like it's yours? Pretend you didn't love him so much you'd restart the universe to have him back. Pretend you didn't wait for him. Pretend you didn't cry at his funeral only to laugh in joy when you knew he'd risen again. Because of course he would. Pretend your fall isn't the end of it all. Forget you're not him and rise against all odds like he would.

15\. Try to stop looking for him behind corners and blue doors. He is no longer your salvation. Nor are you helpless.

* * *

 

> **p.s.: write him your goodbye and make it an exorcism.**

**Author's Note:**

> a wild ride. trademark and all.


End file.
